Betty Gravlin, author of free e-books at Barnes and Noble and Smashwords.com.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Walt Whitman must have been pro-life

If Whitman is considered one of America's greatest poets, why don't we listen to what he has to say about the human body? I doubt any English teacher in a public school would say the evil Whitman wrote about is still with us. I hear a lot of Theology of the Body in his poem, "I Sing the Body Electric."At this site http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=470749 , it says:

"Walt Whitman's description of the body being the same as the soul in "I Sing the Body Electric" is important in understanding his equal desire and passion for all human beings. Because of this comparison of the body and the soul, Whitman's description of the minute details of the body becomes an important insight into his description of the quality of the soul. In this myriad of human beings, he describes his passion for both men and women, for people of other races, and for the elderly."

Slavery was the devaluation of the human body that concerned Whitman as the most evil in his day. What he wrote equally applies to the devaluation of unborn human bodies through abortion. These are a few of the lines that seem most pro-life to me:

"I Sing The Body Electric."

by Walt Whitman

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the

exit of the rest,

You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.....

The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,

No matter who it is, it is sacred--is it the meanest one in the

laborers' gang?

Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?

Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as

much as you,

Each has his or her place in the procession.....

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,

And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,

And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful